Re: Ideas/Regressions

Well, i have to apologize for my flaming. I'm kind of stressed due to my
exams. Actually not by the exams themselves, but of me not caring about
how i pass them and not having plans for my future...

It's just that i use these options every day, so i don't want to see
them removed. It's not like that "wm changing" discussion on gnome-list:
a capplet for chaning the WM can be added at any time IMHO; and you
don't do this everyday - i do toggle java and javascript quite often.
So IMHO java / popups isn't that exotic. Just difficult to understand,
but not exotic and rarely used.

But don't underestimate the "featuritis" of your users.
Reasonable users should stick with a few options, but most users would
like to try out lot's of new stuff.
People like to toy around and play with their applications.

Remember this "Web page comments" application that was hyped on windows
sometime? People could just attach notes to web pages, and anybody could
read these, remove these etc.
I think that has completely disappeared by now. Still people will ask
"can't i do this with galeon".
People will like to be able to attach notes to web pages; still most
people will never use this productively.
But they will complain if they can't do it.

IMHO Gnome2 has done one big misconception (feel free to forward this to
the gnome mailing list, i'm not subscribed to them):
They desing for the corporate desktop only.
For a corporate desktop you want to limit your users' choices, so they
can change less and thus break less. Also the users shouldn't spend so
much time in playing around with their settings.
But if you want to have a lot of settings to play with (and lots of
users DO want to play with their settings) they'll find gnome2 just
boring.
Keeping the System easy to use is one thing - making it interesting to
use is the second thing. One that linux has been a lot better at then
microsoft was.
IMHO Applications should always have some new stuff to try out; that'll
keep them interesting for a longer time. ;)

For example galeon1 still has some stuff i'm going to investigate some
time, in the case i might want to use it: automatic bookmarks. sessions.
bookmark nicks.

Marco: you said yourself that most of your family and friends don't know
what javascript is etc. - but are they actually harmed by the menu
entry? I don't think so. Most will just leave things alone they don't
know about.
Giving the entries appropriate titles is probably more important:
"Override Colors" and "Override Fonts" is easier to understand than
"Use my colors" (this actually is a feature i have rarely ever used
myself... still there are users that might want to have it: people with
bad eyes might want to have this size- and contrast override.)

Greetings,
Erich

-- 
        erich@(mucl.de|debian.org)        --        GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C
         There was never a good war or a bad peace. - Benjamin Franklin
        Die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Menschen ist ein Lächeln.
            "Wissen ist Macht" - wenn man das richtige daraus macht.


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